


marble, salt, and prophecies

by Graysworks



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Amnesia, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood and Injury, Bonding, Broken Families, Canon-Typical Violence, Fluff, Found Family, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Memory Loss, Not too heavy, Platonic Relationships, Post-Canon, Semi-explicit sex, Sickfic, Temporarily Unrequited Love, Temporary Amnesia, i guess?? I haven't read the summer palace alright, oh yeah bois we're going there, take a shot everytime someone pines. for Nikandros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-03-06
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:34:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29003799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Graysworks/pseuds/Graysworks
Summary: Set directly after the end of Kings Rising (and I mean,directly). Self indulgent amnesia au where Damen doesn't remember any of the events of the books, and how Laurent, Nikandros and Jord deal with it, and pressing matters like who, exactly, is on latrine duty this week?
Relationships: Aimeric/Jord (Captive Prince), Damen & Nikandros (Captive Prince), Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince), Jord & Laurent (Captive Prince), Jord & Nikandros (Captive Prince), Jord/Nikandros (Captive Prince), Laurent & Nikandros (Captive Prince), Paschal/never catching a break, if you squint
Comments: 31
Kudos: 98





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hey hey hey it's sickfic time babey
> 
> ** I haven't read any of the short stories, so if I get something super off about Jord, sorry!

It follows that, after agreeing to the most revolutionary proposal of their era, Damen shuts his eyes and passes out. Laurent half expected it, but the blood- there's a lot of it, more than he's seen from Damen since he sent him to the post, and if he recalls that now, he's going to be rash about something. Probably the shock of whoever has the poor luck of checking the baths for hostages and finding their king in a red pool beside his dead brother. Laurent eases Damen's head against the marble. They need Paschal-

Wet slides against his palm. He stills, checks again- no, it's shallow. He must have hit his head when he fell. It's likely nothing, but…

"Damen," Laurent says, abandoning his half-formed plan to race toward the nearest hall and shout for a physician. He squeezes his arm. "Damen, stay awake. You have a head wound.” No response. He shakes him, slightly, and panic chokes his voice. _“Damen?”_

Sandals slap the marble, and Laurent looks up as Nikandros skids to a halt, eyes going first to Damen, then Kastor, and Laurent with his pitiful wad of cloth pressed to Damen's side. He fixates on the chain that keeps Damen's wrist to the ground and demands, “what- have you done-?”

"He needs a medic, go and find one,” Laurent says, controlled. Nikandros hesitates, and he repeats with more urgency, “go and find one! He’s bleeding!”

His armor clanks and rustles down the hall until it disappears. Laurent takes a deep breath. What does he know about head wounds? He can't stay under for more than a quarter of an hour. Will the blood loss from his side need priority? What if he's damaged something behind that thick fucking skull?

Footsteps return in a flock. After initial shock, a stretcher is retrieved, Paschal replaces Laurent's bloody rag with a clean one, and questions him on the manner of the injury. Ten minutes later, the stretcher abandoned, he cleans and sews, and Laurent holds a cloth against the back of Damen's head. Two minutes later, he twitches.

"Nikandros," Laurent says. Nikandros catches what he's nodding at, and braces his hands against Damen's arms. Paschal draws a line of thread up. His assistants hold down Damen's legs. Laurent's gut turns, suddenly.

It isn’t pretty. Damen looks pale, which is wrong, and when he reacts, it’s in minutia, first; twitches of the legs, a jerk, the arch of his back rising. Nikandros says something under his breath and grabs a bit of leather from Paschal’s bag, to put in Damen’s mouth. He cries out, still, and his eyes fly open.

Laurent’s vision tunnels in on Paschal’s smooth, quick motions. Damen’s hair is wet. Sweat, blood- something else. He’s looking past Laurent, toward the ceiling. Laurent follows his gaze, expecting some ruined mural or stained glass, but it’s just empty marble. What is he…?

Ah.

His head is cradled in Laurent’s lap. He couldn’t look at Kastor’s body if he wanted to.

“It’s alright,” Laurent says. An odd detachment settles over him, even as his spine aches from hours spent in chains before the council, and his arms burn from the duel. This, at least, he can give. “I’m here. Nikandros is here. You’re going to be alright.”

The muscles in Damen’s neck relax. But-

Laurent swears when his eyes close.

“Damen,” he says, “stay awake. Damianos-”

Nikandros douses his throat with a pitcher of water, careful not to slosh any over Paschal’s movements. Damen jolts, but for the rest of the surgery, he’s bleary-eyed and listless, and somehow, it’s worse.

  
When they’ve taken him to a bedchamber and Paschal has given permission for him to sleep, Laurent and Nikandros remain on either side of the bed. In his hands, Damen’s fingers are wrinkled from grasping wet marble. The open veranda invites a chill; Laurent is suddenly grateful for the frankly excessive amounts of furs and sheets tucked about the room.

He requires Nikandros to sit through only the barest of politics before the visiting councilmembers bow out, and they’re left alone with a handful of guards and servants, and Damen’s breath evens into his dark-toned, slack-jawed exhales. Again, Laurent hears them, but imposed over a different swathe of silks, rounder, and against his temple.

It’s well within his rights to order everyone away. The thought might have held a gleeful sort of appeal, before, but for some reason, he’s shaken by the feeling that things won without a fight are not things that will last. What if-?

No. No, he will recover, and Laurent will put down insurrections for him, and he will honor their agreement with humor, as if he had ever considered refusing it. He was the one who proposed it. He will see it through. Damen is not one to leave a promise unfulfilled. He will-

“You,” Laurent says, to two of the physician’s assistants.

They approach. Laurent diverts energy into articulation, which takes some pressure from his cold forehead. “Have you privileges to enter the temple, here?” he asks. Nikandros flashes him an odd look, but when the assistants nod, Laurent says, “go to the high priests. Have them perform the rituals and rites to entreat the King a speedy recovery, and a blessing for the kingdom. And-” he searches memories, momentarily, of candlelight in tents and botched Akielon words. “Bring a goat, in offering, for Myalos.”

“Myalos?” Nikandros says, frowning. “Why?”

“Because I wish it,” Laurent says. The assistants bow out. Exhaustion comes over him, suddenly. Myalos: the Akielon god that rules the mind. It’s just a precaution, he tells himself. Damen’s chest rises and falls. Does the smell of medicines and fresh cloth carry into his dreams?

Nikandros still has that odd look.

“What?” Laurent asks, somewhat rhetorically.

“Everywhere you go, convention bends underfoot. Damen told me, ‘you get used to it’.” _Damen_ , he says, forgetful with familiarity. Laurent can think of one convention he hasn’t strayed from. “But when he wakes, I’m going to caution him on the same thing I cautioned his brother, when we didn’t know the truth of our situation; that there is a reason Makedon holds so much power.”

“You think I’m incapable of sewing a few rebellious city states into the fold of a war-less kingdom?”

“I think there will come a day that, if what he feels for you is strong enough, the two of you will have to challenge several conventions.”

Laurent rolls his eyes.

“Or, if not those, then others. I’ve heard what he says, about freeing the slaves.”

“I’m aware that there is a limited amount of change I can implement within my lifetime, thanks,” Laurent mutters. “More aware of the fact that much of it will be undone when someone with ambition takes my place. Did you think I would succumb to destruction and luxury as soon as my uncle was gone? Or are you afraid that my influence on him will lead him to a similar fate?”

His silence speaks for itself.

“Good, then at least we have arrived at the same conclusion.”

“Based on…?”

Laurent takes pity. “Could you have stopped him from throwing himself in front of the court, even if you wanted to?”

Nikandros’s brows furrow; the thought settles, and seems to take.

In a quieter voice, he says, “Kastor wasn’t just my king. He was a brother. And his father, the king…” as if aware that he’s drawing an impossible comparison, he sighs and leans back in his chair. “Do we share this conclusion because we have seen what death does to men, or because we know what a thin line they walk between liberation and freedom?”

Laurent can barely muster offense. “You know, I can remove you from the room.”

“But would you have been able to balance without him?” Nikandros asks, with dark-circled eyes, and Laurent files away his face in that moment under a box marked _don’t underestimate._

Funny. The last person who made it there was Aimeric.

* * *

The Prince -for there has been no coronation, yet- sends Nikandros away after it has become clear that a second body in Damen’s bed won’t tear his side anew, and for a moment of clarity, he sees why it is that Damen’s affections are so strong: they’re alike, in that private, almost jealous way which he struggles to place between fault and flaw. He stations guards outside the room, takes his own watch down the hall in a gesture of solidarity, and bids goodnight to Paschal as the physician is led to his room, robes swishing around his feet, his skewed hat brushing the arch beside the stone corner.

Waves rush against the cliffs, past the pillars, a background of white noise. Nikandros had protested Damen’s relocation to his bedroom -too many open spaces, and saboteurs would have trouble navigating to a room further in- but he was outvoted by a blood-stained chiton and narrowed brows. He supposes that’s for the best; the salty air has always been said to carry health and good fortune to the kings that inhabit the palace.

Then, it didn’t carry much to Theomedes, in those last months. Or the physicians and priests, waving their sickly-sweet incense and peppering sprigs of foul leaves around the floor.

When they were summoned in haste, the chiton wasn’t the only one to order them far, far away.

About half an hour later, steps wander down the hall Paschal disappeared into, and three Veretian guards round the corner, escorted by the men Nikandros had stationed to patrol the upper floors. He nods, and they pass- Lazar among them, though Nikandros only knows the others by face. The three guards already placed along the partially open hall surrender their stations with minimal chatter, and exit the hall with a smatter of boots striking marble. When Jord nears, Nikandros motions him over.

“Have you decided with whom to fill those rotations in the east wing?”

“Yes, I have a handful of soldiers that will step up to it.” He gazes past Nikandros, toward the sea, and drags his hand down his face, his eyes dark-circled. “And you’ve made openings in the second floor, like we discussed?”

“I have some in mind.”

“Good.”

They share a glance, slightly awkward; Nikandros never imagined working with a Veretian, much less staffing the palace with his men, but after the events of the day, all that arises is a dull sort of acceptance. Toward the middle of the hall, Pallas peeks through a winding sculpture to offer Lazar a little smile. Lazar winks without moving.

Jord catches it, too. He says, “we’re going to have to avoid putting them on the next rotation.”

Nikandros sighs and says, “I agree.”

  
For two days, Damen sleeps, and when he doesn’t, he can do little more than keep his eyes open. A steady flow of servants enter and exit the room; to care for someone in that condition is messy, as Nikandros well knows.

Councilmembers are among the groups denied access. It’s poor form, for in Akielos, faith in the king’s health is paramount to tradition, which is synonymous with loyalty- but Nikandros supposes that this way, he can pretend the Veretians are still a separate handful, save for the one that takes up post in the King’s chambers, and leaves them only to deal with the council himself. Nikandros has said his piece to them, but he asks Jord about it on the second day, at mealtime.

“I doubt there will be insurrections among any of them,” he says, casually, as if such a peaceful transition is easily acquired. “But of our trading partners, maybe. And he’s already begun to deconstruct the inner workings of palace bureaucracy.”

“How poorly is it going?” Nikandros asks, through a mouthful of bread.

Jord leans his chin on his hand, eyes on something across the mess. “He’s banned public use of Pets and appointed a committee to limit sponsorship of slavers in the far ports. Oh, and redistributed a few hundred acres of land.”

Perhaps Nikandros should have known better than to ask. He stabs a sliver of meat and mutters, “he’ll accomplish more once the King is well.”

Jord’s eye twitches.

“They won’t be separated,” Nikandros says. “Might as well get used to it.”

“You’re one to talk, next Kyros of Ios. With my luck, they’ll station me at Delpha, for show.”

“I can put in a good word. I hear there’s an opening at the Kingsmeet.”

They exchange a look. In the high-ceilinged room, chatter swells and bursts in bubbles around their table, where a number of captains and council-guards sit, none of Nikandros’s status, but without regard for it. There are precedents; Patras and Vask have sent delegates before, but the casualness… it comes off the fringe of ruin, and it’s precious. Jord sets down his spoon, gaze fixed on a spot in the middle of the table.

“No. No, I… think he needs-” he stops, and his eyes dart to Nikandros, but they have an understanding, and these are strange times. “I think our lives are going to change over the next few years. And- I don’t want to retreat to a place where it doesn’t reach, that doesn’t seem right.”

Nikandros nods, and pushes meat around his plate.

“But,” Jord says, picking up his spoon, shoulders dropping, “I could, if I wanted to.”

“Oh? You’re sure of that?”

“Of course. Easily.”

“Then you won’t mind taking on latrine duty in the guardsroom this week-?”

“Oh, fuck off.” He wags his spoon. “It’s _your_ palace, last I checked.”

He’s smiling. Nikandros shakes his head, stabs at his meal, and grins, and he swears the bubbles of chatter have more laughter than before.

  
On the third night, Laurent emerges from the room, cast orange from lamplight. It’s like a living thing that seeps into Nikandros’s joints where, in the dark of dawn, a chill had kept old sparring injuries stiff. Laurent brushes past him, and he catches a whiff of fresh cotton, medicine. Sweat, but not his.

He strides to the rail, wind tangling his hair, and braces his elbows on it.

The sky lightens.

A change, today, surely. Nikandros takes the respite to scan his men; the youngest yawns, but his posture is alert. The rush of the sea is like a warm blanket that covers marble all cast in gray-green and blue.

“Jord will do latrine duty, you know,” Laurent says, barely audible to Nikandros- probably drowned out by the waves, to the rest of the hall. “If you ask him.”

Nikandros says, “I know.”

“I’ve sent messengers to the other Kyroi, they’ll arrive starting with Isthima, then Thrace, who are sure to be more desperate to confirm the transfer of power.” He fiddles with the cuff around his wrist. “The council has made concessions. There isn’t much to do until the provincial rulers can be gathered.” He turns, then, with one hand on the rail. “I’ve been kept to-date with the funerary preparations.”

As has Nikandros. Ios is his domain now; Kastor will be interred as -if Damen gets his way- he would have been in the event of an early death. It will appease the public, as they won’t have time to process his collusion with the Regent until after the announcement of his death. It will be treated as Queen Egeria’s passing, in an odd way. Nikandros’s chest tightens. Jord’s words resurface.

“I told Jord I would vouch for him if he submitted his name to the Kingsmeet,” Nikandros says. “He refused to hear of it.”

“Did he?”

“They’ll be looking for replacements. For the ones that were wounded when…”

Laurent turns back to the ocean, and his shoulders stiffen. When Damen threw himself at convention, heedless of the pain he’d cause. When Laurent submitted to convention, and almost destroyed them both. Nikandros lets out a long breath.

“You have your own nominees?”

“Yes.”

“I suppose whomever is willing to perform latrine duty is too high of a bar, anyway,” Nikandros says, and watches, with patience usually reserved for Damen’s antics, as Laurent’s chin dips, and his shoulders relax. No smile, but he’s not Jord, and there’s twelve city-states on his back. 

He’s just unlocked his jaw to speak when a large _crash_ comes from the King’s chambers.

  
Once, when Damen was thirteen, he had a tooth removed, after he and Kastor got into trouble on the beaches one afternoon. Nikandros remembers the weakness after the minor operation- sweats, slurred speech, how he stumbled about like a young calf, searching for his center of gravity. There’d been no error in the physician’s dosage of numbing medicines, but to see the usually brash and rambunctious prince reduced to that was…

Well, Nikandros has much the same feeling now.

“Why am I- what...?” he starts, and attempts to drag himself out of the bed. The water pitcher that was on the table he grasps lays in pieces on the floor. His hair sticks to his forehead, and his eyes are red-rimmed; when he sits up, he grimaces and makes a noise of surprise, hand on his side.

“Are you trying to make it worse, Damen,” Laurent chastises, half question. When he grips Damen’s shoulder and wrist, Damen’s brows lower, and he recoils.

Nikandros approaches. “His mind might be muddled.” When he lifts the back of his hand to Damen’s temple, there’s hints of fever.

“Muddled? How did...” he asks, then, directed at Laurent, “who are you?”

For a moment, Nikandros processes the question.

“Hilarious, Damianos,” Laurent says, just before Nikandros reaches the same conclusion.

“Yes, you’ve had your fun,” Nikandros says, and grips his shoulder. “But Paschal is on his way, you can’t get out of an examination, even if you’re unwell.” Gods know Nikandros’s scoldings have never deterred him in the past. Wind blows open one of the shutter panels that’s always loose, and Nikandros closes it without looking.

Damen makes another noise of pain, and holds his side. “I feel -ngh- like I’ve been stabbed.” He pulls away from Laurent again, and this time, Nikandros tries to push him back against the pillows. “Nikandros-”

“Damianos,” he cups his head, briefly, “I appreciate your attempts to lighten the mood, but honestly, we’re just relieved that-”

Damen makes a noise of frustration, grabs his collar and pulls himself to his feet. "You're not _listening_ to me," he says, desperately, and that’s when the first thread of foreboding hooks into Nikandros.

“That’s enough,” Laurent says, with sudden alarm. “You have a fever. You’re going to tear the thread-”

“Who are you?” Damen demands.

For a moment, he’s thirteen again, and then not. The shards of the pitcher reflect torchlight onto the window panels, cloudy with the outline of the sea.

Laurent says, in a detached voice, “Damen, stop.”

“Nikandros, answer me. Who-”

“Stop it, Damen.” Laurent’s voice goes low and rough, and sits on the same note.

“Nikandros, I order-”

“ _Damianos_.” Laurent grabs his arm, and in a heartbeat, Nikandros sees blood and rage and war, and all the ruin they narrowly averted- and by the time he grabs Damen from behind and restrains him, it’s happened. _Thump!_ Laurent struggles to his elbow, hand going to his jaw, where Damen hit him, and both of their breaths cut the silence, masked only slightly by the pounding of the sea, outside.

“Stop! Stop,” Nikandros insists, overcoming his shock. “That’s the Prince of Vere!”

“I killed the Prince of Vere,” Damen rasps.

“His brother, Damianos, it’s his brother! You were his slave, you allied with him to take down the Regent and Kastor-”

Laurent goes white. “Nikandros, wait-”

“-and unify the kingdoms. Damianos, listen to me.” He holds fast when Damen looks between the cuffs and struggles.

“His _slave?_ Where is my father, wh- what are you _saying-?"_

“Kastor killed your father, Damen,” Nikandros manages. To say it out loud takes something out of him, even with armfuls of his King, fever-addled and twitchy. “Laurent killed Kastor- he saved you, you must listen-"

“-he killed-”

“Damianos, you’re injured, your mind isn’t whole!”

“-my brother?”

All at once, Laurent’s terror makes sense. Damen just woke up in a room with no memory of the last few months, with Veretian gold on his wrist and his brother’s killer in front of him. Nikandros shudders to imagine the reverse, but it pales in comparison to this- _this_ where all that they’ve built together cracks; every conquered fort, every promise of unity. _Myalos,_ he swears, and the room seems to grow darker.

With renewed strength, Damen heaves against Nikandros’s arms. “I’ll kill him. Let me go. I’ll _kill_ him-”

“Damen,” Laurent says, and his voice breaks. “You know me.”

Nikandros hauls Damen back a foot; even injured, he’d been underestimated. “Get out of here. Now.” He raises his voice. “Pallas! Aktis!” In seconds the guards push in, and he calls instructions over Damen’s pants, which grow labored by the minute; Paschal arrives with his assistant, and they manage to wrestle Damen onto his back. Laurent stands in the door, cast in the warped shapes of the men passing the light.

White as marble.

Finally, Damen stops resisting, and when Nikandros looks up, Laurent is gone.

* * *

Jord finds him.

“They examined the wound, it’s alright.”

Inhale, exhale. Stone under his palms. The sea’s roar tunneled far off by the rail that comes up above his head, its smooth, even surface cold against the back of his skull. Thunder _booms_ over the water. The ground tremors.

“Are you?”

Laurent laughs. “I don’t think the goat was enough. Maybe if I had slain Kastor across the altar, instead.”

Jord says nothing, for a moment. “Thank the gods Nikandros didn’t fetch you.”

“You two are conspiring against me, that’s right. You’re going to bring up Aimeric, to console me. Don’t. It isn’t the same.”

“Is there anything I can bring up?”

Laurent presses his palms against his eyes. His elbows brush his knees, which are wet from the stained floor. Jord has seen his worst: chained in the Akielon throne room. No, that’s not quite it.

“The Kingsmeet,” he says. “Everyone lost some faith there.”

“No, never.”

“They were innocent men,” Laurent says. The palace trembles again. “I could have prevented it, I didn’t _think_. You can’t stand up to me like he does.” _Did_.

Jord hesitates.

Wind rustles banners down the hall and a bench rattles. All this, for a man that he could have killed first, if he wasn’t caught up in Damen, come to rescue him. All this for a man that Damen and Nikandros wanted to spare. Would it have been better? No. No, it would have driven a wedge between them, and the Kyroi. Laurent made a choice. It was the right one. It _was_.

“I’m the wrong person for this,” Jord says. “I’m glad that you took a life in exchange for your brother’s. The best I can offer you, as a man, is something you don’t want to hear.”

Laurent drops his hands to his lap. “And what is that?”

“You may lose him, and you are responsible for how that inspires you to act.” He kneels and places one hand on the stone rail, face earnest. “But there are times when thought fails. In those times, the only thing that’ll lessen your pain is to be surrounded with people who see your value without it, believe me.” Lightning flashes across his armor. Rain patters along the roof, then slants past the railing, carried by gusts.

Chaos is something Laurent is intimately acquainted with. What would Damen say? He comes up with nothing, except- _Jord is right._

Laurent pushes his hands into his hair. Raindrops collect and fleck from Jord’s armor.

Chaos. Balance.

“I’m not ready to hear about Aimeric,” Laurent says. Something tight has loosened, in his throat. “But- tell me what they said of you.”

Jord sits, and tells him.

* * *

The next day, Damen is feverish. Nikandros stands guard inside the room, because at more than one point, he and Pallas are instructed by Paschal to restrain Damen, and Laurent will hear nothing of using leather bands, as safe as they are. Nikandros half-agrees; he wouldn’t want to wake immobile with the Prince of Vere at his side, either.

It’s either a testament to his loyalty or his foolhardiness that Laurent remains exactly where he has been. The sky clears, a little, and he meets with the council, with palace staff, everyone he usually saw in the first days. The only difference is that he sleeps across the hall.

“Maybe this is a test,” Nikandros offers, while Damen tosses and turns, and Laurent swings a robe around his shoulders, before he turns in. “From the gods.”

“If I’m to secure their blessing, then surely saving his life should suffice,” Laurent mutters.

“I meant yours.”

“I have no gods.” He brushes past Nikandros. “Only prophecies.”

Night passes, and the shift rotates. Nikandros trudges to his room, collapses onto his bed, and sleeps until the sun is high, and the page rouses him. He passes the latrines and does a double take at the sound of laughter; Jord has taken the initiative, apparently, and roped in a combined force of a dozen of their men. Even Lazar and Lydos.

“Care to join us?” asks Aktis, his nose wrinkled under his bandana. “He says it’s the stables or the bunks next, depending on your disposition.” Nikandros makes a hasty excuse, and manages to recover most of his appetite on the way to breakfast.

The halls thrum with the usual palace gossip, but when he makes his way to the King’s chambers, later, it turns toward politics. The Kyros of Isthima has departed from the royal port. Thrace’s has sent word that they are making preparations to travel. Haven’t you heard? Our own Nikandros is going to be Kyros at Ios.

His chest swells, and with it comes the longing to see Damen made well. Partly because of what they’ll lose if he isn’t- and partly because the familial gap left in the past months is more distinct, with him incapacitated. 

He pushes open the door on a conversation that abruptly ends.

“Nikandros,” Damen says, reclined- and visibly exhausted. The room is empty except for Pascal and Pallas; Nikandros jerks his chin at them, and clasps Paschal’s arm in gratitude.

“Don’t keep him up long,” Paschal cautions.

“I won’t.”

The door slides shut with a _schiik_.

“How are you?” Nikandros asks, and comes to the bedside, fighting the urge to inspect. “Still feverish, I see.”

Damen attempts a smile that looks like a grimace. “I have- behaved terribly, as I’ve been made aware. I’m resigned to laying here like a child, thanks.”

“Well, part of that was my fault. And do you… remember, much at all yet?”

Damen’s fingers curl over his stomach. “I remember father getting sick. I remember… Jokaste and I visited the temple at Isthima, for a day, the rest is… gone. I- I was hoping you could fill me in.”

And it’s so- anxious, so thoroughly unlike Damen, that Nikandros sighs and draws up a chair. For this, no amount of formality could ease the shock of the story, so he forfeits it all, and braces himself, and lets the events of the past months flow.

  
At the end, Damen lays, silent, and tips his head back to stare at the ceiling. Nikandros shifts his feet to rest against the leg of the chair; someone had swept the floor clean of the glass shards. He runs his finger over the engraving of the chair’s arm.

Minutes slip by, and rays of afternoon. The open panels along the wall blow in a temperate breeze, left by the retreating storm front. Nikandros doesn’t know how long they sit without saying a thing.

Finally, Damen whispers, “I want to talk to him.”

Nikandros straightens. There’s only one ‘him’ this could be. “Are you sure?”

“Am I sure I want to, or am I sure I won’t lay hands on him again?”

“Both, Damen.”

“What else? You think he’s a threat to me if I do?”

“He killed a man in an empty room, using only a chair. I fear for anyone in the same city as him.”

More silence.

Fabric rustles; Damen sits up, and slumps against the pillows, expression tight. “Then counsel me. Can I entrust my feelings with the future of this place? Put it in the hands of someone like that, when every other pair has turned, the moment I became unnecessary?”

Nikandros rubs his beard and contains a laugh. What he would have given for this self-awareness, just a month ago. Now, it comes with a silent question: _am I fit to rule at all?_

“I’m not exactly a neutral party,” he confesses. “The Prince convinced you to give me Ios.”

“After he took Delpha.”

“After you wooed him into an alliance. Before that alliance turned several forts and political figureheads to your side.”

“It’s not- funny,” Damen says, but some of the tension bleeds from his shoulders. Nikandros lifts his hand, palm up, in surrender, and after a pause, Damen asks, “could I really- do that?”

“Well, he didn’t ally with you based on your self-restraint.”

Damen rubs the back of his neck, and his eyes wander to the windows.

After a moment, Nikandros answers, “I have seen a change in you, Damianos. And in him. I trust you. I think- your heart is a great fault, certainly. But it is also a strength, one that has been sorely missed.” He squeezes Damen’s arm, transported back to the beach accident, again, when they were younger, and the prince was in sore need of a guiding hand. 

Damen won’t look at him. “There’s one thing I- that I worried about. Maybe you could clear it up, then I’d be willing to bargain with him.”

“What?”

He finally turns, clear-eyed. “Was he the only other person in the room when you found me?”

Nikandros’s skin prickles, cold suddenly. The thought had crossed his mind, in the moment -in his anguish- no, it couldn’t be. He’d cleared Damen’s name. He gave himself up for Damen. Surely he wouldn’t-?

Damen studies him intently, for signs of hesitation. Nikandros makes a choice:

“No. We arrived at the same time. I ran for a medic as soon as Kastor stabbed you.”

His brow eases. Nikandros exhales and tastes treason, sweet like the rolls served at the mess- a treat for the cooperation of the guards’, for not causing trouble to the cooks and pages. Is this the first time he’s lied to Damen?

Damen clasps his arm and smiles, and this time it reaches his eyes.

* * *

Their first discussion starts out well enough; Laurent answers question after question relating to Damen’s captivity, their campaign, and alliance. They avoid things like baths and shutting their eyes and pretending. Laurent explains his handling of the transfer of power, up until now. Damen says, “I can see why it’s important that I’m coherent by the time the Kyroi arrive.”

“It would serve us both well,” Laurent agrees. “And Nikandros. He’s been hesitant to control the palace with you incapacitated.”

“Hm.”

Silence. Laurent shifts; he rearranges his weight against the bedframe at the end of the mattress, by the lump in quilts near Damen’s feet. He’d begun pacing halfway through their conversation, and can’t bring himself to sit down again.

“We’ll…” he starts, and halts, and starts again, “we’ll need to bury him. Your brother.” Former brother, he’s almost tempted to say, but it isn’t true for Damianos, or Nikandros, or any of the Kyroi, for that matter. Nikandros drew the comparison between Egeria and Kastor. Since then, Laurent has been conscious of it, if unsympathetic. “I can bring reports on the preparations until the date, if you’d like.”

Damen’s gaze goes hollow.

The question hangs with the bedcurtains, awkward.

Damen lifts his head, with a crease between his brows. “Were we friends?”

“...what?”

“Friends. Were we friends? I found company in the other Kyroi’s children, or noblemen’s, but I thought…” he trails off, then waves, shortly. “Nevermind. I can have Nikandros update me, it’ll be easier-”

“We are,” Laurent says, too loudly, “friends. To the armies, we were- brothers. But it wasn’t right. We were friends.”

Damen’s eyes drop to Laurent’s wrist, where the cuff catches light and throws it onto the wall. He raises a brow, as if to say, _‘friends that force chains on each other?’_ and for a short, desperate moment, Laurent wishes for that accusation, for the biting familiarity only Damen could deliver, while at once remaining perfectly honest. He recalls Jord’s words and takes a deep breath.

When he lifts his eyes, Damen has that odd look, again. Focused, but searching. It’s as if he sees something- just beyond Laurent, or through him. Laurent’s stomach flips. “Damianos?”

The look fades.

It doesn’t return for the rest of the day.

  
From then, Laurent counts down two sets of dates: one to Kastor’s burial, and one to the arrival of the first Kyros.

Of the latter, there are fourteen to begin with- not because Isthima is so far, but because the Kyros sent word that he’ll be arriving in Thrace, and as their relationship is fair, the two will journey overland to Ios in order to visit a temple. Better then, that Kastor’s burial is before they arrive, at just seven days away initially.

Damen makes a steady recovery, though Laurent sees little of him unless he’s summoned for an audience. Without saying it directly, he seems onboard with their unified rule.

Maybe some things transcend memory, Laurent thinks, then admonishes himself.

“I can’t stand this room,” Damen mutters, on the third day, just after Paschal told him he couldn’t stand at all until another two days had elapsed. “I need to _do_ something.”

Nikandros snorts. “I wouldn’t, if I were you; last I said that, Jord almost roped me into scrubbing the armory to the Veretian standard. Ridiculous.”

Laurent finds himself smiling, and looks at Damen, out of habit. Damen meets his eyes, his features creased with contained amusement. He looks away first. A little bubble swells in Laurent’s chest, but it’s hope and it’s as foolish as Nikandros’s feigned disdain for Jord, or Laurent, at that.

Two days later, Nikandros and Pallas help Damen stumble around the room, down the hall, and toward the gardens. It’s an affair conducted with the secrecy of court assassins in Vere, and when Laurent voices this under his breath, Damen laughs, bright as bells across the yard, and for a split second, he can pretend this is a natural progression from their last fight- but it’s not his arm around Damen’s waist, or Damen’s arm around his shoulder.

Fortunately, at that moment, a page comes to summon him to a meeting, and he pulls himself away from the group.

When he looks back, Damen watches him with a contemplative expression.

_I would court you, with all the grace and courtesy you deserve._ Laurent turns those words over at night, and rakes his hand through his hair, heart thumping as it did, foolishly, when he first heard them. He tries to will desire away, but it’s a strip of heat up his stomach, and the lowest part of his spine, and it comes when the emptiness beside him is a void that threatens to swallow him too. On the sixth day, Laurent gives in and does it himself, only to find an insurmountable task.

It’s been a long time. It had been, before Damen, but now his phantom touch makes Laurent run hotter, and strings out his movements until the soles of his feet cramp. And he can’t, in the end.

He pants, and covers his face with the other hand, and swears in the quiet of his room.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, starting the fic: it'll be a oneshot, probably like, 4k words at most lol  
> me, 57 pages in, realizing after 15k words that I wanna write an epilogue: whoops
> 
> basically there's going to be one more chapter and an epilogue, which I might put together, but for now, expect chapter 3 in another week(ish) :)

The funeral begins at the palace. Its private temple remains closed to the procession, but the priests are the first among the rows of spectators, trailing the pallbearers in their white robes, some veiled. Damen rides beside Laurent behind the body, and it strikes him as familiar; an echo of their march south, after Fortaine.

He tries not to interpret it as an echo of what might have- could have- once was; the sunset heats his skin and birds cry across the steps of the palace as they exit, and Damen is whole. Guards surround them in shining metal, some with traces of the garlick-y scent of freshly smelt bronze. Cedar and salt chase their meander through the city and toward the mountain.

Kastor’s body is the only thing motionless in a sea of prophecies.

When they reach the end of the rocky path, where slate gives way to grass and dense forest, Damen dismounts, and Nikandros. Laurent hesitates. They’d agreed it would look better for both of them to enter the burial chamber, but part of him balks at being entrusted to witness something so intimate to Damen, at a time when he is not the same man who trusted Laurent. Foolish. Damen has less reason to trust him now, so of course-

“Exalted?” asks the attendant waiting to take his reins. Laurent squeezes them; his knuckles whiten.

Nikandros says something to Damen, too quiet to hear, and Damen looks at Laurent, expectant.

It’s neat, in a sense; kill the brother, save the King. Enter the burial halls of Akielos, where no Veretian in history has laid eyes on the inside. All to gain the trust of the people who, not a week ago, would have seen both of you beheaded for treason.

Everything here is motionless.

Laurent doesn’t like it.

Governing doesn’t stop for the dead, so he finds himself swept into conversation halfway between the gardens and the main hall. Damen had gone ahead, not wishing to be seen relying on Nikandros to limp around, which strikes Laurent as a very _Damen_ thing to do, and yet, hollowness follows the thought.

If he doesn’t regain his memories- is he the Damen that Laurent trusted, or something else entirely?

“-your highness,” someone says. Laurent narrowly avoids a branch to the face, and lifts his brow at Herode over the chorus of cicadas; surely, he’s missed some spiteful remark.

Herode smiles a little and says to Mathe, “I doubt he’s concerned with a stray caravel, now.”

“I should hope not,” Laurent says brusquely, “seeing as my uncle borrowed Mathe’s fleet to invade our new allies. I would very much like to not concern myself with a loose end that Mathe distinctly promised to tie up while we ration troops from Karthas toward inland revolts.” Mathe’s unpleasant face goes blotchy, even in the dark. Satisfied, Laurent tunes out the conversation again.

He retires early, to a room on the first floor usually reserved for low-rank diplomats, or their consorts. It feels appropriate.

Laurent mindlessly traces the smooth, clay window sill -no marble here- and with the other hand, holds a fistful of cotton sheets that ought to have been swapped for heavier cloth during the cold months, and seem to have remained during the whole season; their pilly texture catches the grooves of his palms, which are dried from handling medicines and scrolls and quills and reins and things that seem inconsequential.

He’d ordered food and wine, for Myalos’s altar. The servants exchanged mystified looks when they thought he was out of earshot.

Under the door, a shadow moves. The murmur of two voices, then footsteps retreat. _Rap rap rap._

Laurent sighs. “How are rotations faring, Jord?”

The door opens. It isn’t Jord.

“I hope I’m not intruding.”

“You find a king huddled in a guest room and assume he isn’t hiding from something.” Laurent laughs. It’s toneless. “You have more faith in me as a saboteur than I thought.”

“You know that… isn’t what I meant.”

He pinches the juncture of his nose and brows. Damen sounds exhausted. Laurent says, “you shouldn’t be walking, still. If Nikandros finds out I kept you-”

“Well, maybe we both have designs,” Damen interrupts, and approaches the end of the bed, the door still ajar. His face is lined. Laurent flattens his palm on the window sill. He’s just beginning to pin the specific texture- sandy, but flat like a stone weathered by water. No, not water. Silt and slate in the water. “You didn’t fight back. When I hit you, you didn’t fight back.”

Laurent controls his voice. “Damianos, we just buried your brother.”

“You didn’t even refute what I said.”

“ _Damianos_.” Laurent covers his eyes with his palms.

“You said, ‘you know me’. What did you mean?”

“What didn’t I mean?” Laurent snaps, dropping his hands into his lap. The floor has become interesting. “You know me. In the archaic sense, surely Nikandros has emphasized that much. You weren’t coerced, nor did you coerce me. It was mutual. It doesn’t matter.”

“It sounds like it matters.”

Laurent glances at the door. “I am not discussing this with you.”

Because he isn’t, in a sense, Damen.

“That can’t be it,” Damen says, and sounds- frustrated, like he’d been grasping at something, only for it to fly further ahead. “There’s something else.”

_Ah yes, that’d be the innards of my chest which you breached and rearranged._ Laurent bites his tongue. They both have their self-destructive habits; when has he turned Damen away in the past? When have either of them _learned?_

He stands, and steps toward the door. Damen’s hand closes around his wrist, and he stops, staring at his shadow on the blue patch of floor. When he exhales, he’s surprised that he can’t see his breath escape.

“You’re right. There’s something else.” He says it just to say something. “You know my campaign methods, my battle strategy. You were there for-”

“ _Laurent_.”

His head snaps up, instinctively. Damen studies him, mouth working around invisible words; for a moment he seems to _see_ him, there’s recognition in his eyes, a spark of affection-

and-

And it goes out, lacking oxygen. Damen struggles, visibly, as if its form left an imprint on his palms, before finally his head drops, and he swears. Laurent’s thoughts crash to a halt, dipped under the surface of a murky lake. Damen releases his arm. He steps back, against the sill, grips it with his hands and leans, like all the strength has gone out of him.

For a long time, Laurent counts the thumps coming from his chest. They sound too loud, in the stillness.

Damen lifts his head; he resumes the stressed, sad face, this time tinted with shame. “You’re right. We shouldn’t be focusing on this now.”

_Then what?_ Laurent almost asks, as if Damen didn’t come solely to torture them- as if Laurent doesn’t deserve it. He caused this, after all.

Damen inhales, and blinks fast, then glances at the ceiling like he did in the baths, his head in Laurent’s lap, like the answer might lie out of sight. 

He says in a rush, “I can’t be what I was to you, but if- I’ve deprived you of a friend- I- I’m in sore need of one after today. Maybe... we should start there.” Laurent recalls the briars that rose to his throat after Nicaise’s murder. It’s not the same as Auguste, but that’s a tangle of thorns half-undone, and it would take a lifetime and Damen, as he was, to tease out the length of it, neither of which Laurent has the power to grasp. 

Nicaise would hate to be compared to Kastor. 

Huh. Maybe Laurent can empathize with Damen’s shame.

He nods, barely, and sinks onto the bed. After a second, Damen follows suit. When was the last time he held him? On the floor of the baths? Against another bed while fever wracked his body? Suddenly Laurent recalls the night before, and he’s ashamed for another reason.

In a room devoid of it, Damen smells like salt and marble.

“If I’m hiding,” murmurs Laurent, “what’s looking for you?”

He braces his forearm on his knee, palm up. Damen takes it and holds, very tight.

“I can think of a few prophecies,” he says, tone dulled by grief.

Somehow, it’s a break in the cycle of watching and waiting, and wanting. The next morning, Damen joins the council for the first time, and brings Nikandros; there are circles under his eyes and his mouth is set in a permanent frown, but he perches thoughtfully on his chair, and cuts in with suggestions every now and then. Laurent is quick to stamp out hope, but- something has changed.

“I wish there was enough time for him to visit the summer palace. It might help,” Nikandros admits, beside the fire one night, as Paschal and the palace physician go over their notes of Damen’s condition. Nikandros let himself in. Laurent isn’t even sure he _knows_ this is a Veretian affair.

The summer palace. Damen spoke of it during their journey.

“I’ll add, ‘extending the hours of the day’ to our list of standardization,” Laurent mutters. “What would you have the measurements of fixed next, the size of your-?”

Paschal clears his throat. A strangled wheeze escapes Jord, on the other side of the table, but Nikandros grins and waves them off.

The palace bustles with laborers, in preparation of the Kyroi arriving- and with slaves. Laurent couldn’t free them all if he wanted; the palace would collapse and Ios along with it, but his gut turns when he hears an off-duty Akielon whistle at one of the serving girls. A habit of his Veretian upbringing, maybe. He throws himself onto bed that night and thinks about power, and choice, and will. 

Damen points out something on the map, the next day. His wrist brushes Laurent’s. He still wears the cuff, but no one questions it.

Laurent distracts himself with diplomacy. There’s no shortage of policy to address, plans to make, forts to consider potential resistors, bureaucrats to manage. He doesn’t hide the fact that, if not for Damen’s injury, he’d rather be across the kingdoms, assessing developments in real time- holed up here, it’s too much like those early days, when Damen was untrustworthy, or not there at all.

“What is it?” asks Damen, one afternoon, while they’re crossing the courtyard for the fifth time, his arm loosely resting on Nikandros’s shoulder. He’s improving. “You have that look.”

“That’s his face Damen,” Nikandros says-

-at the same time that Jord says, “he can’t help it.”

“Be glad that he’s here,” Laurent tells them, and refuses to answer.

Another storm brews, out at sea. Patchy sunlight streams through the halls and pillars and gardens, dousing the palace in gold, and even the clouds that roll in later can’t dim most of it. Laurent sits up late in a council chamber, ticking spaces and memorizing governors’ names. Aktis mentioned split loyalties in his home colony in the west, and Laurent hasn’t known peace since.

Jord opens the door, eventually, and Laurent seizes on the opportunity.

“If you were a governor and the third of the people that owned your province’s wealth wanted one thing and the two-thirds they exploited wanted another, who would you fear more?”

He glances over his shoulder, like Laurent might be addressing someone else, then says, “it would depend on what they want.”

“One-third want to keep their exploitative systems and avoid martial law. Two-thirds are willing to resort to violence for reforms. You have one month.”

Jord sets his helm against his hip, one hand braced on the back of a chair. “This seems like a question for Nikandros.”

Laurent waves vaguely. He knows what Nikandros would do.

“I guess… support the one-third, implement reforms later?”

“Because that’s worked so well in the past.”

“I- you _asked_ -”

“On the other hand, I don’t want to risk a political mutiny by defrocking the legislators…”

“Shall I… send for the king-?”

“ _No_.” He says it too sharply, then makes a noise of frustration, and rubs his face. “No. Damianos lacks the- experience to counsel me on this.”

Jord makes an interesting face. “Does he? I recall in the days after we set out from Arles a different series of events.”

“It was different. It was his conscience. He had already begun to-”

Laurent catches himself. Funny, he never censored the truth of his relationship with Damen, before, but somehow-

“I see,” says Jord, and he sets his helm on the table with a _thump_. Its polished aluminum reflects scattered candles, warping them into stray wisps of curls around the cheekbones. Jord says, “you’re not… taking advantage of him, you kn-”

_“I know.”_

His wrist falls against the page with a light _thud_. He’ll smear the ink. If not him, someone else, or his words will fade and crumble in time like the Artesian ruins that Damen’s summer palace is built upon. Bare to the sky, scattered, forever reaching for a dome that isn’t there. Gods… isolation has made a romantic out of him. He lifts his wrist and pushes his fingers into the hair at the back of his head, stiff with the heat of a closed room.

Even without him, Nikandros’s presence is tangible.

“I know,” Laurent says again, milder. “But intent or no, I am not an equal to Damen’s state of mind. With inequality comes power. With power…”

The ability to hurt. To- mislead.

Jord pulls the chair out, and sits, carefully. “You know, when I first heard of his condition, I thought- well, I feared he might be trying to deceive you.” Leather rustles and scrapes. “It was just for a moment, but... sometimes the worst instinct is just that. If you need his counsel on matters of his own kingdom, I strongly advise that you seek it out.”

_Advise_. Laurent almost laughs. “You turned down the Kingsmeet, but you would speak to your king like a man of ambition. What, afraid I’m going to raze Ios to the ground without him?” he asks, recalling his and Nikandros’s conversation. “Turn on my allies, pike them beside my uncle on the walls? I’m not Aimeric.”

Jord looks away, pained, and taps the table. It’s a low blow, but it happens to be the most efficient route to what he’s really saying. “He did change, you know. In his own way.”

“Then why isn’t he here?”

“Because he killed someone I called brother and I embraced him afterwards.”

Laurent consciously stops himself from snapping the quill, a sudden cold encasing the back of his neck. Damen’s voice is almost audible, behind the second, more sinister implication that Jord can’t know he’s making- _you hated Aimeric, because you could have been him._

But no, Jord doesn’t know. Damen doesn’t know, now. Laurent’s secret died with his uncle, speared before the gates of something he won, for Damen and himself. With no small amount of horror, Laurent realizes that this only relates their situation to Jord’s better.

He says, with some difficulty, “you think it doesn’t bother me that Damen would find affection for me regardless?”

“Affection cultivated under a pretense is not always false.”

“I didn’t kill Aimeric- he made a choice. If I had given him a second chance, do you think he wouldn’t have chosen the same?”

“I’m not saying that.”

“What _are_ you saying?”

Laurent finds himself unsettled by the realization that, as in the case of his conversation with Nikandros, he doesn’t entirely want to know.

Jord loops his arm around the back of the chair, and clasps his wrist. His face is lined. He says, like it’s something he has to admit to himself at last, “if Aimeric had given him _self_ another chance... I’m saying that I think his choice would have been more meaningful. Whatever it was.”

Silence. A candle burns out, and smoke wisps from a puddle of wax, cradled by a stub of cooled beads; if Laurent doesn’t call for replacements, the room will go dark within the hour. Cold already winds around his ankles like fingers.

He says, “isn’t it torture to speculate?”

“Not any more than pacing the Kingsmeet,” Jord admits, eyes far away, “prophesying whether we should have rid his room of sharp things.”

It stays with Laurent, even after he sets down his books; he drags it to bed, and curls under it while a chill creeps around the door. Power, balance, chaos, affection. He thrives on abstracts -he _knows_ he does- but suddenly, everyone is apprehensive of how he’ll apply them. Is it because of how they took the center? Is it distrust, rooted and reaching now that he’s beaten his political enemies?

Perhaps he could construct a crueller reason. His relationship with Damen; it’s the piece out of place, or out of time. If they had won Ios without that foundation, maybe his supporters would fear a dive into tyranny faster. Maybe, with Damen’s confession -a humanization of Laurent, to the Akielons- people like Jord and Nikandros and hell, even Paschal can reassure themselves that they are owed some power by Laurent. 

But no, that doesn’t work either. Jord and Nikandros knew Laurent to lead, and Damen to follow, at least at first. Laurent orchestrated things before he even knew Nikandros’s name. They wouldn’t doubt his ability to lead alone, now.

What has he done since Damen was stabbed? Is it his execution or the substance of his actions that gives people objection? Which offends convention more?

When he finally sleeps, it’s fitful.

* * *

Nikandros has just left his shift on guard-duty to retire when he passes the armory, and hears the shuffle of feet. Someone getting up to trouble with a slave, no doubt. He sighs, and pushes open the door, prepared to rebuke whatever palace staff has decided to defile the weapons-

Jord jumps, and clutches a helm to his chest. “Gods, could warn a man,” he says.

“What are you doing?”

“Not sleeping,” he says, and thunks the helm on its shelf. In his other hand is a cloth. Approximately two rows out of five are gleaming. “What about you?”

“Looking forward to it.”

They share a tired smile; Jord’s is envious, but he looks away before Nikandros can ask anything else. Strange. From the moment they met, Jord wore resistance like a second skin- even knelt in front of Damianos, in a fort held by his enemy, at that time. Now, exhaustion tugs his shoulders forward, like the strings that hold suits of armor upright have gone lax, for him. Nikandros realizes with a start that he barely knows anything about Jord.

“How are the council meetings?” Jord asks, haltingly. “Now that the king is in attendance.”

“They’re going well. Meniados has sent word that he’ll travel for the coronation. Makedon too, though he pretended to be on the fence.”

Jord’s brows draw together. “He was the one with the notched belt, right? And the temper.” A laugh startles out of Nikandros, and Jord adds, “I thought he was beneath the Kyroi.”

Nikandros wanders into the armory. “In theory, yes. In practice, there’s a handful of provincial rulers with more power than us. The coronation will be completely ceremonial, since Damen seized power the… ah, old fashioned way.” By sword, he means, and from the way Jord’s smile drops, he understands. Nikandros ventures, “I never thanked you, by the way. For rallying the Veretian soldiers to order.”

Jord exhales, and lifts the cloth absently to the temple of the helm. “It was the least I could do.”

Quiet follows, with the gentle _schwick_ of cloth on metal. Nikandros clasps his hands behind his back. Has Jord stopped cleaning from the moment they took the palace? “There are people to do that, you know.” That, the guardsroom, the latrines. It works on rotations, like all things, but Jord seems to have relegated his men to a single purpose.

“People, to you,” Jord says, to himself.

“What?”

His back tenses; he shakes his head. “Don’t mind me. Good night, Kyros.” And continues to polish. Nikandros lingers, struck by the odd distance, the widening rank between them as the palace gains momentum toward the coronation- it feels just days ago that they had rooms beside each other in Mellos, with warm hearths and the shared culture of the Kingsmeet to look toward.

“Good night, captain,” he says, and leaves him to his thoughts.

* * *

Halfway through a meeting where the council sweats, watching Laurent examine re-worked borders, Damen dismisses the room. At almost two weeks since the Kyroi sent word that they'd been delayed, he's catching up.

“Thanks,” Laurent mutters, when he notices their absence about fifteen minutes later.

“You’re welcome.”

He shuffles a paper behind another, and rotates it to suss out the lines. He flips back and forth from its original draft. The changes are too small. Mathe may need to be bribed.

“How about this?” Damen asks, and slides one out of the pile. Laurent holds it up beside the others.

“I might as well stab Audin in the foot.”

“We could always switch the rulers and see how they fare.”

Laurent laughs. “Like rats in a maze. No- here’s what will work. We give Mathe the fort at Marches.”

Damen pushes away from the table, and wanders around it. “It’s a prop position. He won’t take it.”

“Not until I have Kempt.”

Damen stops, light brushing his curls and streaming past his crooked arm. “We barely have this kingdom under control and you want to go out and conquer another-?”

“Think of it like Delpha,” Laurent cuts in, and drags the map toward him, its reedy texture scraping wood, “a change-state, in flux. We lost it when our noble ties were gone, but if we can extend the market of Arles there-” he skates a rogue paper away, “-lift the trade ban on Ladabors, Marches, Arran, and the Akielon ports-” he grabs a quill and stripes lines up the coast, along both sides of the border, “-establish Kings’ roads, here, and here. Where money goes, alliances follow. We’ll have Kempt within the year.”

Damen comes to his side to examine the changes. He braces his hand on the back of Laurent’s chair.

Finally, he shakes his head and says, “you’re brilliant.”

Laurent’s face heats. He rubs the back of his neck, and gathers papers with the other hand, to give himself something to do. “I take it for a yes, then.”

Damen puts his other hand on the table, rounding Laurent in. “And _shy_ ,” he says, in a different voice, one that Laurent hasn’t heard since- “I can see why Nikandros trusted you.”

“Nikandros?”

“After I was… after Kastor stabbed me,” Damen says, his dark eyes level with Laurent’s. “I can see why he ran for help and left me in your arms.”

Oh.

Oh, no.

Nikandros, you fool, Laurent thinks. In his mind’s eye, he’s in the chamber, knees wet, teeth coppery from a backhand hours earlier. Damen alone knew that he saved them both from Kastor. Damen alone, and now Laurent alone. His chest tightens.

“I…” Damen lifts his hand to Laurent’s cheek, where he’d hit him. Laurent freezes. “I’m sorry about this. It looks better,” he adds, and his thumb brushes the scab. His hands smell of perfumed soap- something earthy, that reminds Laurent of the storm, and the citrus from the oranges set out in the middle of the table. At once, Laurent is aware that he’s sitting, and Damen -the presence of him, gods- is not.

“Better than your back,” Laurent says, and hates himself for it.

Damen, the actual masochist, _grins_. “I think a kingdom and my life make up for that.”

“I thought we agreed not to do this.”

“You brought up the lashing.”

“After you brought up Kastor.”

Damen’s mouth closes, but his smile lingers, if a bit diminished. And it hits Laurent anew; this isn’t _his_ Damen. This is Jokaste’s. And Nikandros’s and hell, Kastor’s Damen. He tries to imagine diplomacy, politics and rule beside this Damen, the one who rendered a man unconscious with his bare hands and spite, who spoke back to kings and left to brave an unknown city with the clothes on his back and raw will, who underestimated Laurent because he showed some skin.

They are, like most of his predictions, streaked red.

His hand is still on Laurent’s cheek.

“Damianos,” Laurent starts, “I-”

The door flies open. Aktis and Lydos hurry in another soldier, panting apologies and bringing with them the smell of mud, and sun-baked horse. Laurent stands to put a foot of distance between himself and Damen.

“Apologies, Exalted,” the soldier says, eyes on the ground.

“Speak,” Laurent says.

“I have- urgent news from the Kyroi at Thrace, Exalted.”

Laurent and Damen exchange a look.

“What news?” Damen asks.

“The port at Thrace was besieged today, just as Isthima’s convoy arrived,” he says, and with sudden clarity, Laurent knows what he’s going to say- “-it was attacked by a vessel flying the colors of the Prince of Vere.”

* * *

Nikandros hears the fight brewing from three floors away. Sure enough, when he throws open the door to the war-room, which hasn’t been used since Kastor made his preparations to ally with the Regent, a host of arguments greet him like a slap of cold water.

Mathe wants the Akielons to put down their own insurrection; Herode insists it is a matter of both kingdoms. For several minutes, none of them notice Nikandros’s presence.

Then Laurent’s voice cuts through the fray, cold and quick. “Perhaps we should ask the only Kyros currently in our presence what he would have us do.”

All eyes turn to Nikandros. Around the long table, his eyes pass from Veretian to Veretian. They aren’t decentralized, like Akielon nobility. They’ll contest anything he proposes. As he lifts his eyes to Laurent, standing at the head of the crowd beside Damen, Laurent nods; an understanding passes between them.

“My duty was to Delpha, first and last,” he says. “I gave that up for a larger responsibility, for the sake of unity.” Damen studies him carefully. “If Delpha was set upon by loyalists, then everyone here would ride to take it back.”

“Then we would be turncoats,” Mathe says, dismissive. “Just as Delfeur defected to Theomedes.”

“Who was it that caused that?” Damen asks, voice sharp.

“The Regent may have given us land and prestige, _Exalted_ , but you overestimate our station. We command but a fraction of the royal army, and then, only under a king.”

He says the last bit with a pointed look at Laurent. Nikandros’s skin prickles, and beside him, Jord’s arms come across his chest.

Laurent says, matter-of-factly, “I may not be king in name, but it doesn’t matter. I give position, land, wealth, I can take it away,” and with increasing severity, “right now there are three potential dissenters to Damianos’s claim to legitimacy, two assenters which have been attacked by soldiers they will assume are _my_ forces, further destabilizing Akielos and lending to coalitions that will form to destroy, not only my army, but Akielos’s economy-” by now Mathe has realized his mistake- “once that _happens_ , our only chip to bargain with the majority of citizens up _and_ down the coast, will have vanished, and revolts will begin, further stretching our forces, across the border, until _unity_ has ceased to exist for all and any concept of _statehood_ becomes a thing of distant memory, have I _said enough?”_

“How long has it been?” Jord says under his breath.

“Nearly two weeks,” Nikandros answers.

“You’d think they’d have learned by now.”

He bites his tongue, mouth twitching, unconsciously. Jord keeps a straight face, brushed by torchlight.

“Jord,” Laurent calls. “Gather your men, we depart at sundown. Nikandros, can you swim?”

It takes a moment. Mathe starts, “your majesty, surely-”

“I’d say I’m decent,” he shrugs.

“Bring pigeons. We’ll cut them off at the harbor. You’re all dismissed,” he adds, and strides out of the room, as if he’d entered it already having made the decision. Knowing Laurent, he had.

* * *

Laurent makes it almost to his room, to throw some clothes in a sack, before Damen catches up to him. It’s impressive, considering he was bedridden two weeks ago.

“You’re not coming,” Laurent says. They pass the winding sculpture where Lazar and Pallas are always making eyes at each other. Afternoon gold floods past the pillars, and a red sunset streaks the horizon.

“I need to show my face. I have to restore trust-”

“You’ll restore trust by siccing your Veretian allies on a threat to your kingdom.”

“You don’t need to do this alone-”

Laurent stops, and whirls toward him. “You wonderful, idiot, Damen, I am _capable_. I have done things alone since I was-” he gestures, hand flung wide, and a noise of incredulity escapes. “We are not discussing this. You’re not coming.”

Damen follows him into the room. “You think you’re the only one with something to prove? The only one hurt by this- this-” Laurent rummages around for a sack, and tosses it onto his bed. “All of it, the unification, the _deaths_ -”

“The months wasted on gaining you?” Laurent interrupts. “We crossed kingdoms, we fought, _kings_ , Damen, and you remember none of it. Not Arles, Acquitart, Aimeric- those are just the A’s, shall I continue-?”

“You don’t think I’m incensed?” Damen demands. “I wake up, and I don’t know where I am- I have scars, Laurent! And Nikandros- he can only tell me so much-” he gestures wildly, “-and suddenly I’m expected to _govern_ and the only person I need to satisfy is like a wound to press about anything I might have accomplished in the months I’ve lost! Yes, I remember none of it,” he says, and runs out of breath, “but I look at you, and I feel what I might have, before, and I have to believe that that means something!”

There’s no murky sea to sink through and block him out, this time. Laurent was out when the storm hit, and it dragged him onto the rocks. He inhales, startled to find that it shakes. Of course. This is Damen; so of course.

Because this is where he falters: in the face of unknown dangers, Damen would stand by him, just as Torveld, just as Jord, and now Nikandros, Vannes, Makedon, probably. And- Laurent doesn’t trust himself with that. Forget affection; when identity grows under a pretense, there’s nothing to salvage after they stop closing their eyes, and pretending.

“I know what you’re doing,” Damen says, softer, and leans on the bedpost. Sweat sheens his neck, but his tone is steady. “You don’t get to decide for me what I feel. If you give me the chance-”

“I didn’t fall in love with you,” Laurent says.

Damen goes still, his lips parted. Laurent sees the moment it settles; the unspoken, spoken, the obvious conclusions, made. He didn’t fall in love with this Damen. He hated him, hurt him, and only after they both bled were the gods satisfied. Even then…

“Is my friendship such a meager victory, then?” Damen asks. In it, Laurent hears echoes - _is it enough to call it a kingdom, rule together_ \- but that’s all they are.

“You wouldn’t like my answer-”

“So give one that I will.” He steps around the post, bridging the gulf. “Laurent.” _You take liberties_. “You can’t insulate yourself for fear of hurting other people.”

No, he was wrong. This is Damianos, through and through. He would self-actualize if you locked him in a box, without sun, for weeks, and convince you that you made a good decision. Laurent flies through memories and miles, and chaos incarnate looks him in the eye and _laughs_.

“Nikandros lied,” he says.

“What?”

“He lied. He wasn’t there when Kastor stabbed you.”

A handful of precious seconds; Damen’s face changes as he works around the meaning of the words. He pales, visibly, and steps back against the vanity, his scars peeking out of the back of his chiton in the mirror. His hands find the edge, as if in one strike, Laurent has taken his legs from under him. Laurent hates that he knows it.

“You lie,” he whispers.

“Ask him,” Laurent says, and gestures to the door, where Aktis and Lydos’s shadows stretch across sun-painted marble. “Shall I have them call for-?”

“Stop,” Damen demands, in a terrible voice. “I don’t believe you. He would have done it to protect me.”

Laurent says, “yes.”

It settles. Damen, unused to governing by his own admission, must assume the worst. Laurent, like Jokaste, took him in, manipulated him, and only once he was stripped of power and inhibitions was the truth revealed. It’s for the best, Laurent tells himself. If he found out another way, he’d twist it- in his grief. In his hurt. Best to slip the knife in and out, quickly.

“Don’t come back,” Damen breathes, like it pains him, and Laurent- he saw it coming as soon as he decided, but something in him recoils, just like it did when Damen hit him. “You have me where you want. I’ll play my part, for the sake of my kingdom.” He lifts his eyes, and they burn with an intensity Laurent hasn’t seen in weeks. “But you will not step foot in Ios again.”

Laurent believes him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. I would DIE for Nikandros and also Jord  
> 2\. yes this fic still has a happy ending, I promise,  
> 3\. this fic brought to you by my undying love for one (1) overthinking boi


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi I'm just a bi guy I'm 20 and I never fuckin learned how to forshadow
> 
> Check tags!! there's semi-explicit sex in the last scene, but that's it

Nikandros thinks it halfway up the coast to Thrace, and then it’s all he _can_ think; something isn’t right.

He chalks it up to this being the first military expedition since he and Jord ordered soldiers after Kastor’s loyalists, and pushes it to the back of his mind, but it persists, quietly- after they re-take the harbor and restore the fort to Eratosthenes, Thrace’s Kyros. Through it all, messages come from Makedon and the northern forces, all of the same variety since the day Laurent killed Kastor: unrest in the states, unrest in the families. As smoke clears, he has the first taste of deliberation over how best to resolve the violence that that unrest will bring.

Seventy men kneel between the walls, in the regent’s colors. They’re technically Mathe’s, according to Laurent- but technically, he forfeited them after Laurent maneuvered him into taking Marches.

Crunch, crunch. Nikandros paces the parapet, armor baked with sand and mud. The sun beats against his back, and grime drips down the back of his head. Behind him, Laurent stands with his hands behind his back, motionless as the moment he took up the stance. There’s barely a stain on him. Paschel walks over, once, to say something, and judging from his deep frown afterward, Laurent isn’t in the mood.

He halts when Jord opens the door to the tower, trailed by two Akielons that he takes to be the Kyroi- he hasn’t met either yet, though they’ve technically served in the same position for two years, now. One has a beard that resembles Jord’s. The other has Pallas’s coloring- deep brown, and with the same hair, though in braids.

“This is him?” the bearded Kyros asks, in Akielon, with a gesture to Laurent. Nikandros nods.

“He’s tiny,” mutters the taller.

“I assure you, I make up for it in ambition,” Laurent says. “Let me be the first to acknowledge that I regret our first meeting has to be a consideration of whether you get to slaughter my army in front of their statesmen. I expect it won’t be an easy decision, but I will uphold my end of the bargain I struck with your king.”

Nikandros winces. “What he means to say is-”

“Bargain?” says the braided Kryos, and rests his arm on the stone wall that overlooks the harbor, wary. “Ah, that’s right- his brother for yours. Damianos has found a cold-blooded Veretian to teach him the meaning of retribution, gods be praised.”

Nikandros starts. “You speak of your king that way?”

The Kyros -who must be Theocritus- waves dismissively, as if a near-abduction was but a slight deviation from his plans to see the temple. “He isn’t king yet. He won’t be, if he can’t gain the favor of the others-”

“Hold your tongue,” says the bearded Kyros, who turns a critical look on Laurent. “I am Eratosthenes, the Kyros of this city, I have not the patience for the meddling of palace brats and goat-farmers,” he side-eyes Nikandros, whose jaw _clicks_ shut, “nor whoever stabbed his brother to secure Ios. These are your men, but this is not your fort. They die. All of them, today.”

“Is that a precedent you want to set?” Laurent asks, and sounds, for all the world, _bored_ , “for the goat-farmers? Who will maintain their fields?” He nods at the captives. “Take them as house slaves, for all I care.” 

Nikandros sees Jord react to the idea, his shoulders stiff with revulsion, and suddenly, it clicks- his insistence on making the soldiers do domestic work, as if to prepare them for a worst scenario where Laurent decides to shrug them off to someone else. Even to Nikandros, the thought doesn’t sit well; you don’t train men for years in state-funded garrisons just to stick them at an oven, somewhere, or under a wealthy Akielon landowner. If Mathe turned to Laurent’s side, then surely some common men will, given the chance.

The Kyros makes a dismissive gesture. “You Veretians and your profit- who will buy a Veretian _helot_ who, just days ago, sent cannons into their shop?”

“I find this agreeable,” shrugs the other Kyros, to the incredulity of the first, “Isthima is always in need of rowers. In fact, I’ll buy them from you.” He smacks his friend’s shoulder and grins.

Jord goes to the rail and looks out over his statesmen, distress written all over him. Nikandros recalls his conversation with Laurent at Damen’s bedside.

“I’ll buy them,” he says, garnering everyone’s attention. “On behalf of the King. They’ll join the garrison at Ios, under my own direction.”

He’s not sure, out of them all, which looks more shocked.

Once details have been settled, and the Kyroi retire to deal with their own affairs, Jord comes to Nikandros and clasps his hand between both of his. He says nothing, but Nikandros nods, and squeezes his shoulder before he passes. Laurent remains, uncharacteristically wandering the length of the parapet- though he stops when he sees Nikandros approach.

“What happened?” Nikandros asks. “That was a calculatory blunder, if planned, and if not-”

“It wasn’t,” Laurent says.

“Wasn’t a blunder or wasn’t planned? That could have been a crisis among the council.”

“It wasn’t planned.”

“So what happened?” Nikandros repeats.

Laurent rolls his bad shoulder, and exhales in a long gust. Jord says nothing, to his back. As the silence stretches on, even Paschal exchanges a glance with Nikandros, then Jord, and for a moment, Nikandros thinks Laurent might not answer at all.

Finally he says, “I- don’t. I can’t-” He pushes away from the rail, and reels, like it hit him. Raising one hand to his head, he takes a short, shuddery breath, then turns and strides to the tower, throws open the door, and disappears.

* * *

Nikandros finds him later, on the stationary ship.

Waves reach out for miles. Stars glitter in a swathe above the line between sea and sky.

“You were right about one thing, at least,” Nikandros says, to his left, his shoes _clunk_ -ing the deck; he comes to Laurent’s side and leans his hip into the rail. “Damen would’ve… complicated that.”

“Thanks.”

It’s perhaps the first time he’s said the word to Nikandros. They give it the room to settle.

“How did you,” Nikandros starts.

Laurent finishes, “convince him to stay? You won’t believe it.”

Waves rush past the hull, where dozens of men sit in chains, immobile because the wind will be strong enough to propel them when they set off. It’s ironic, somehow, that they be allowed to return to Ios, while for Laurent, this will be his last glimpse of the ocean for at least a month. They would have killed Laurent and Damen at a moment’s notice, just weeks ago. Hell- just hours ago. Is this balance, to him?

“I did the same thing as you.” He picks at the wood under his folded arms. “I misled him.”

Nikandros goes still. Wind tugs Laurent’s clothes toward him, and his hair. Lanterns swing over their heads. Metal squeaks. A high wave breaks at the bow, and mist whisks across his shoulders, standing the hair of his forearms on end, like lightning might chase it.

“What would you do if your brother-”

“No, stop. I wasn’t accusing.”

A short silence.

Nikandros approaches, and places his hand on the rail, brows low like he’s searching for something in Laurent. When they lift, he’s evidently found it.

“What?”

“You asked if I knew of the influence you had on him,” Nikandros says, “I never stopped to wonder why you would descend into -what was it?- luxury and destruction. I think I have my answer, now.”

Laurent searches for a last, lone kernel of resistance. Something to push against. Something that hasn’t been worn down by Damen- but no, those are all reserved for chaos, and suddenly, Nikandros exists outside that.

“I’m not returning with you,” he admits, and curves over his arms on the rail a little. “I’m going up to Karthas. I haven’t told Jord, yet,” he adds, because he can’t think about speaking to him right now. In his peripheral, he sees Nikandros start, then try to cover it.

“You might be the only thing Damen remembers.”

“Is it fair to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“We both lied, Nikandros.”

“I- gods, I _know_.”

Air whistles past the rigging, needling into Laurent’s cheek, and for a moment, he can imagine the bruise where Damen struck him stings, still. Nikandros ducks his head into Laurent’s field of vision. He grips his shoulder. Laurent starts, but this is a fight that’s already been lost, or not begun at all.

“Don’t leave,” Nikandros says. “I’ve lost two brothers already.”

No, he was wrong. This is chaos, this is tombs and pitcher shards and candles reflected in the cheekbone of a helmet; this is chaos, but a different kind than he’s used to. Laurent swallows. Only Damen has spoken to him like this, and not always with words. How does he answer? What if it’s not _right?_

“You don’t understand,” Laurent says, and finds his voice thick. “He thinks I’m- _managing_ you, that I-” a whole ocean, and there’s more salt in his lungs; he’s drowning in it, “-I stabbed him, and I might as well have. He knows what I am, Nikandros. He _knows_.”

_Damen_ , he had said, _you know me_ , but it was only the parts Laurent turned against their common enemy, and now there is none.

“No,” Nikandros says, like he could argue Laurent into thinking otherwise- like anyone could. “He doesn’t. He may be king, but I am the Kyros of Ios, and if I say you are required in the palace then there is nothing he can do-”

“-but replace you,” Laurent refutes. “I can’t see that. It would destroy him.”

Nikandros swears- a lengthy, muttered thing, and releases Laurent. “Then let me wear him down. Eventually, he’ll see-”

“You don’t understand,” Laurent repeats. “He isn’t the man I knew. He isn’t the man who drew a sword in the Kingsmeet for my honor- but I am the man that begged for his life, on my knees. I am leaving, Nikandros. It’s over.”

There’s a certain finality to it. Said aloud, it’s- resignation, not anguish, that follows.

He can’t bring himself to look at Nikandros. 

After a long silence, Nikandros takes a step back, hand resting on his hilt.

“I’ll tell Jord,” he says.

When Laurent doesn’t answer, he retreats, and leaves him with creaky lanterns and the rush of the sea.

* * *

Jord oversaw the transfer of the Veretians into the ship, so Nikandros combs the tents pitched on the hill beside the fort, before someone directs him to the streets just before the harbor. He finds him in the stables outside the fort, making conversation with the horse-keeper.

“Leave us,” Nikandros says, then- “lose a horse?”

He runs his hand over the neck of one and smiles, a little. “I was looking to gift someone.”

“Oh?”

“There’s this goat farmer,” Jord says. “He reminds me of a friend.”

Nikandros approaches, and holds his hand out, then rubs the horse’s jaw. “A friend. A friend- like Makedon is mine?”

“Hmm. Same temper, I’d say.”

“Did you just call me impulsive, indirectly?”

“Indirectly.”

Jord grins, eyes creased with mischief- and it’s so different from Laurent. Nikandros has emotional whiplash. He gives the horse a final pat, then wanders over to the empty watchman’s bench and collapses into it with a sigh, muscles aching from a day spent fighting. Hay and wood fill his nose; it’s a clean stable, though. Not like those at Mellos- Heston would approve of it.

“Did you know?”

Jord turns. “What?”

“Did you know he wasn’t going to return to Ios?”

His smile fades. It ages him. “I could guess. Something was- off. He had us prepare certain things- things for a long journey, not a swift conquest. Why?” his hand falls away, and lands on the post. “Has he said something to you?”

“You’re to return to Karthas.”

“I suppose that makes sense.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Nikandros says, suddenly exhausted. “Laurent and Damen alone are forces to be reckoned with, but together- they built an empire, Jord. We watched them. And now they’re just- it’s going to crumble. It may take ten years, twenty- but what happened today will happen again, and next time, I won’t be there to stand up to him.”

Jord studies something off to the side, and his voice drops. “What would you have me do? Appeal to his conscience?”

“No-” Nikandros makes a frustrated noise. “No, I just…”

A gaggle of voices pass the door, momentarily.

“Nothing they do, or don’t do,” Jord says, carefully, “could be worse than what the Regent was. You know that, surely.”

“Yes...”

Jord walks over, scuffing straw and dust, and clasps Nikandros’s shoulder. “Leave the dead in the past, Nikandros.”

“And Damen?” he asks, softly. It isn’t death- but is it living, being robbed of time like that?

Jord’s eyes lower. “According to Laurent, he got what most of us could only dream of.”

“What’s that?”

“A chance to start over.”

* * *

Just before Laurent pulls himself away from the ship, Paschal emerges from the hold, where one of Jord’s men has been put, to expedite his treatment. He won’t be joining them at Karthas, so Paschal must have made his farewells to the captain while he was down there.

“Any better?” Laurent asks, when Paschal approaches, his robes whisking the deck.

“A little. He’ll survive.”

That bad, then.

“What about you?” Laurent asks. “No plans to grow a brain and desert?”

Paschal laughs, a sound Laurent didn’t know was familiar, and rights a barrel to perch on, his crooked hat brim brushing the rigging strung up behind him. He rests his elbow on the rail, weathered face turned to the crew in the ship’s belly.

“I am not my brother,” he says, lightly.

Laurent swallows. 

After a moment he asks, “does it... get easier?”

Paschal’s smile takes on a knowing tilt. “I presume Jord could have answered you that, already, your grace.”

“What about,” Laurent nods at the hold. “Sewing them back up?”

_Scrape_. His arm comes off the rail. He folds them over his chest. “Someone must do it. One day, I’ll pen an encyclopedia of all the parts that damn a body- not that either kingdom needs a physician to tell them that, I’ll say.” Laurent musters a smile, small as it is, and he pauses.

“Eventually you begin to tell,” he adds, after it strings out. “What did it.”

“So what did it?”

“Oh, that poor man? His own bloody axe.”

“Maybe it’s best that he’s not coming with us.”

Paschal chuckles again, braces his hands on his knees, and stands, then casts a glance at the sea, like he’s already committed it to memory. “Shall we?” Laurent takes a deep breath and nods. They signal to the guard Jord assigned, who fall in line before they cross the deck, and continue on to the plank, where crew trickle off or onto the boat, like water sliding in a bowl.

“I think it was right,” says Paschal, “turning your uncle’s men over to the Akielons.”

“Hm, maybe. If I hadn’t, Mathe would’ve charged Nikandros double. Or worse, he’d have petitioned Eratosthenes for reparations, to make up for the ones lost when they went for the fort.”

The steady _clunk, clunk_ and incline of the plank smoothes into gravel that _crunches_ underfoot, and the stench of fish blows in from the left, where fishermen finish their inspections of damaged vessels and cart off their catch. Something’s familiar about it. Once you’ve seen one pig-farm, Laurent supposes.

“No, I don’t think so,” he says, finally. “Nikandros didn’t have the perspective. I would’ve written Jord off as a patriot. There’s somewhere between that-”

“Between freedom and liberation?” Paschal translates skeptically. It hits Laurent like cold water. “Among surgeons, there’s a saying, your grace. ‘The mind ends where the soul ends, where the body ends’; we are made of the layers, I take it as. Like a physician cannot distinguish whether the heart is more alive than the brain, we can know one thing.”

Laurent realizes he has stopped. “What’s that?”

“Unless they converse regularly, neither are good for shit.”

“Since when do you swear?” Laurent asks, head spinning- but Paschal clasps his hands behind his back and gives a small, mysterious smile. “Nevermind,” Laurent mutters, and walks on, beside him. “I’m beginning to think I ought to draw straws for who gets Delfeur. How do you feel about laces and rings?”

“They tangle. Though my extensive knowledge of poison might incline me toward a long life.”

Laurent laughs. “Well, at least someone knows what _didn’t_ cause Damen’s-”

He stops again.

No.

No, it couldn’t be so simple. Damen will misconstrue it as management, again.

But what if-

“Paschal,” Laurent says, carefully, “did Damianos ask about his wound? What did it?”

“Mhm, certainly. Nearly as soon as he was awake.”

“What did you say?”

His heart is in his throat. He doesn’t need Paschal to tell him why it’s misplaced.

“I told him it was a knife. It was driven in at an angle, by a tall man, about twenty pounds lighter than him.”

Distantly, Laurent sees Jord and Nikandros emerge from a stable, and raise their hands. The guardsmen call something. There’s an exchange, but it’s nonsense words, spoken like the rush of rain against a roof.

He replays the argument.

_You lie. I don’t believe you. He would have done it to protect me. You will not step foot in Ios again._

At once, and like the world rearranges, Laurent refits the picture through this frame; Damen knew it was Kastor that stabbed him, and Laurent who killed Kastor. Denied affection and trust from Laurent, his one link to who he was, he began anew, comforted by the fact that some things couldn’t be puppeted by strangers. Nikandros’s betrayal hurt, oh yes, but that wasn’t what threw him.

It was that the puppeteer would throw it in his face to escape what they really wanted to fight about. It was dissatisfaction with friendship. It was that- _damned_ conviction Laurent clung to, about traitors and brothers and _I can think of a few prophecies._

“Laurent?”

He starts, suddenly aware that an exchange has strung out in his absence. Nikandros watches, a furrow between his brows. Laurent’s eyes shift to Jord, beside him, and the strings untangle, like Myalos himself has dropped them, too occupied with laughter.

“I need to talk to you,” he says. Then, to make sure he understands- “-about Aimeric.”

Laurent, his assorted company, and the Kyroi arrive to Nikandros and Jord’s meticulously arranged soldiers -just where they left them, it seems- and a smattering of well-groomed palace staff, the aristocrats of Ios, and the Regent’s body piked in front of the palace. Eratosthenes spits at its base. Nikandros looks like he restrains himself.

It’s a relatively quiet welcome; they’d miscalculated some wind-pattern and it had taken an extra four hours, so the sparse lights of the polis halo the harbor, and past the palace torches, orange dots the mountain, where several noble estates peek through the firs and slopes. It feels like- home.

Home has somehow become synonymous with varying degrees of danger.

The palace opens. They are ushered inside. Robes and silk whisper across stone, and still summery air ripples around the ends of capes. Laurent hears the first greetings from beyond the arch, in the throne room, and lingers until several people have gone before him.

“It won’t be easier,” Nikandros says. “Get on.”

Paschal shuffles over, in his lop-sided hat and strange robes, and says, “shall we go altogether?”

Laurent squares his shoulders, sends a silent prayer to Myalos, and spins on his heel.

Damen sits alone; the second throne is empty, and when he sees Laurent, he must see an intent to fill it, or another deception, because he goes still. His voice cuts across the clamor. “Our brother of Vere, to what do we owe the early visit?”

They parted as counselors, but meet as kings. Laurent is struck with the feeling that he’s been here before. He strides forward and says, “I come to deliver a gift, to the King of Akielos. Last night our combined forces quelled an attack. I have placed the instigators into the hands of Nikandros, Kyros of Ios, who has graciously invited me to make this known personally.”

He glances to his left. Nikandros offers a small nod, makes his gesture of loyalty to Damen, and splits off toward the assorted crowd. Murmurs of approval rise, for both of them. Laurent can barely hear over the blood rushing in his ears.

“The court finds this agreeable,” Damen says, in a carefully neutral tone, though Laurent catches Mathe’s face in the crowd, which would imply otherwise. He’ll deal with him later. “Is there anything else?”

Laurent stands at the foot of the dais. Damen sits as he did before armies; straight-backed, hands out beside him, calves displayed as if they might be part of the marble throne.

He clears his throat. “There is- yes.”

An expectant silence follows.

“I have come because we parted on poor terms, and I wish to amend that.”

“So you have, with your generous gift,” Damen replies, coldly. “But I believe I was clear as to the nature of our agreement. You’ll find the door behind you, just there.”

Laurent says, “is this the game we are to play, then?”

The room quiets.

“I do not know what y-”

“Fine,” Laurent says, “shall I clear the room, or would you like to?”

“Don’t do this,” Damen says, sharper, clinging to the pretense.

“Shall I return once I’ve conquered the rest of the known world in your name, would the _court_ find that agreeable-?”

“Very well,” Damen interrupts, “amendments, make them. I agree to listen if you agree to go. Do we have an understanding?”

Several slaves resume fanning the rapt court members who brought them, in anticipation of such a bloodless exchange. The heat remains half-unbearable. Laurent understands, suddenly, that he is to do it here, in front of strangers, and the council, and if he doesn’t, he’ll never convince himself to climb the steps again. He unstraps his sheathed sword. Buckles clank. He places it, point-down, in front of his feet.

“I have wronged you,” Laurent says, “Damianos.”

Realization crosses Damen’s face. “No.”

“I was wrong to reveal what I did, at the hour of my departure-”

“That’s enough,” Damen says.

“I was -you will _hear me_ \- wrong to hold you up beside a memory, it was neither fair nor appropriate after what you lost-”

Damen shoves to his feet. “ _Stop_.”

“-I should have trusted our shared counsel,” he presses on, though Damen descends the steps, expression thunderous, “can I at least _finish?”_

“I have heard enough,” Damen says, then says to the room, “ _all of you get out._ ”

Laurent’s chest tightens; the room clears hastily, and Damen approaches, and Laurent blurts, “if you want to throw me out, there are people to do that. Or do you intend to cripple me and our precarious peace?”

“ _You_ ,” Damen insists, and he seizes the front of Laurent’s shirt, “crippled it when you left. I have a kingdom to run. I made a decision. You don’t get to come in here and-” he releases him, and Laurent stumbles backward, “-maneuver through it, like you did for everything else-”

“I did nothing that wasn’t for the sake of our futures, Damianos, you know that.”

“You did nothing that wasn’t out of fear for them!” he shouts. “You build armies on sand and castles out of ice!”

“I am trying to tell you that I’ve _changed-_ ”

“Since four days ago, when you misled me for your own peace of mind?”

“Since I realized that peace was the last thing it bought!” His voice cracks. Damen has backed him toward the pillars that overlook the wide balcony, the lights bobbing on the sea. Laurent blinks, fast. Oh, gods. Not like this. Has he really ruined this, too?

_Is there no way forward for us?_

“I may have taken advantage of- this. What happened to us,” Laurent says, “but don’t act as if you didn’t want to escape your grief. You sought me out. At every turn, you sought me out. I have to believe that means something.”

Damen’s eyes are turned to the ground, bleeding fury, and somehow less silent than his icy, “ _leave_.”

Laurent’s breath shudders out of him. He curls his fingers, and the hilt of the sword bites into his palm. He’d forgotten he was holding it.

The tip _thacks_ against the ground, and, giving his weight to it, Laurent sinks to his knees, blinks fast, then squeezes his eyes shut, as if it was ever any help. Night air closes around him like still, hot water, and for a long time, there’s silence, broken only by the crash of waves.

Outside, Jord and Nikandros wait. A fleet and a boat of rescued Veretian traitors wait, a council of bronze and conventions of steel and empty Kingsmeet daises wait, wait, and Laurent could curl behind the seawall for years; it will never hold, not without a spine.

This is what happens, he thinks, when you see the storm a mile away, and convince yourself you know how to breathe sea.

This is what happens when the tide goes out instead.

The air stirs. Damen’s sandals _shhhick_ on the floor, and he walks to the center of the room. Maybe Jord will assume the worst, and rush in, steel drawn, or maybe Damen is more predictable than that. Already, threads cross and thicken; they’ll be given a day to resupply, there will be a farewell posse on the steps, the road to Karthas or Mellos will be long.

Damen’s steps stop. Laurent drags his hand over his eyes, but tears patter beside his knees. Perhaps he’s contemplating his own night. Who to spend it with, to forget. _No_ , that’s cruel.

Laurent has just gathered himself enough to open his eyes when he realizes; Damen has never seen him like this before. They came close, in the Kingsmeet. In the armory, with his sweat and sawdust in Laurent’s nose. Damen regards him now, half-turned, brows drawn. His chest rises and falls quickly.

His face shifts, into that look he gleaned before, like he sees two things in the same place, where there ought to be one.

Then, face going slack, his eyes widen and he staggers- recognition crests- his voice thickens with it- 

“ _Laurent?_ ”

It crashes the silence, and Laurent’s desperate plans. A lump rises to his throat. It can’t be- it couldn’t have been- _this_ , of all _things-_

“Damen,” he chokes, hardly recognizing himself; he stands and the sword slips out of his hands, clatters to the floor, shatters the quiet altogether- everything thorny and twisted in his chest rearranges, to hope- Damen steps toward him, unsteadily, breath high and tight, and it’s all Laurent can do not to run to him and seize his shoulders.

He doesn’t have to. Damen strides forward, his hands come up, he cups Laurent’s face and gasps-

“ _Damen_ ,” Laurent repeats, pleading, and grasps his wrists, the hard flex of tendon beneath skin. “It’s me. It’s _me_.” Damen pushes Laurent’s hair away from his face repeatedly, like he can’t believe it. What was barbed and knotted under Laurent’s ribs unravels and threatens to burst.

“I-” Damen starts, bitten off, “Laurent, oh, _gods_ , I know, I _know-_ ”

He makes a face caught between pain and relief and he laughs, and it’s wet, and Laurent throws his arms around him, fingers digging into his back, almost tighter than he held him after the wound.

“I’m sorry,” Laurent muffles against his neck. He shudders. “You were right- I’m sorry-”

"As am I," Damen says, and laughs again, breathless, then cups the back of his head. Laurent buries his nose in Damen’s hair. He shakes- they both do. The room seems wider, somehow; brighter, like a cloud has cleared from it, or a weight came off Laurent’s chest.

Damen kisses his cheek, and he laughs too, strangled with relief. Then Damen kisses him, really, and all that’s left is joy.

It tastes like salt. For once, Laurent thinks, it’s welcome.

* * *

Nikandros paces in front of the doors and their pillar frames, one eye on the mingling occupants of the foyer, who match the tile mosaics in all their finery- except the guards, stationed just where he told Aktis to have them. He may prove himself a guard keeper after all.

“They may be a while,” Jord says, off to the side, and Nikandros sighs, stops, and leans his weight on one heel before the door. Jord’s mouth curls up.

“What?”

“I was going to say, it’s just like in Mellos.”

“I was thinking, the Kingsmeet.”

They exchange a look; half doubt, half consideration. Or rather, one, then the other. Jord walks to his side. His hair lays damp against his forehead and around his ear, from the heat. Gods, Veretians and their layers.

“Maybe,” Jord amends. “There was one night, before you reached the fort. But Laurent was the one spitting fire.”

Nikandros asks, “is that what you spoke of with him? At Thrace?”

On the veranda, water drips from potted elephant-ears, their long stems drooping from the weather that can’t make up its mind. A hoopoe flits from the hanging vines to the pebbled floor, dark with damp from a recent watering. Jord traces its path too, then turns to face the hall, and crosses his arms.

“I told him something he already knew at Thrace.”

“That’s not an answer. What did he already know?”

“Something he didn’t feel, yet,” Jord says, then adds, “not- about Damen. About himself, I think. How he… projects.” He says it with a side-glance at the door, like they might fly open, and Laurent might order him arrested for treason. “If he listened, he’ll be trying to convince Damen of the same, but I’m not sure it will go over well, at this stage.” It’s odd to hear Damen’s little name come out of Jord’s mouth. As if they’re discussing a cousin.

“Well, if you know something Laurent didn’t, then Damen surely won’t understand the first time.”

“You’d be surprised.”

“That’s right, you rode with him after Arles. But that was… after Arles.”

“It was before Aimeric,” Jord murmurs, and Nikandros rifles through memory for the name. He comes up with a sheet-covered body, fresh dirt on a grave under the shade of poplar trees; thinking, whoever they buried there wasn’t just a soldier, he was noble, beloved. Combine it with Jord’s comment about the Kingsmeet, and- ah. Nikandros has double vision; Damianos and Jord, like mismatched mosaic tiles.

“If they don’t come to an agreement, I’m prepared to leave with him,” Jord says, and squares his shoulders, like Nikandros accused him of something, silently. “I know you think it a coward’s route, but I’m no Kyros, Nikandros; I can’t challenge him like you challenge Damen. You realized that, yesterday.”

“Well, maybe we place too much importance on the idea,” Nikandros admits. “Look where it’s led us.”

They both shift their eyes to the door, where the argument had crested, then gone quiet. Nikandros’s stomach turns at the thought of disunity; a progression of silent hostility, petty feuds, and eventually, shuttered ports and isolated towns. Delpha, on a larger scale. It hadn’t bothered him before, but now-

“Even if it doesn’t work,” Nikandros says, “you could- stay here, operate in my guard.”

Jord laughs. “It’s bad politics.”

“Akielons have to do something to excess. It will be accepted if I pitch it on the basis of hospitality.”

“Mm, I’d have to consider. Is dignity a worthy trade?”

“When I took the fort, you rode with us,” Nikandros says. “I can’t imagine anyone could question your character after that.” Jord looks down, and rubs his mouth, as if to hide a smile, but the edges of his eyes aren’t creased. It’s as close to Nikandros will get to saying what he wants to, in a crowded hall- _let me give you a home, if he won’t._ Forget arrests, Laurent would kill him for splitting up the Veretian royal guard.

Jord gazes across the hall, where Paschal makes polite conversation with some soldiers. “I… couldn’t just leave them.”

“Bring a handful. I can make room.”

He wants it more than he expected. The past weeks, Jord and Paschal have done nothing short of flip what he knew about Veretians on its head. Laurent, too, but he generally does that with what Nikandros knew about everything.

Jord has just opened his mouth to respond when the door opens, and Damen and Laurent emerge. Nikandros searches for- _something_ , a wound, the sign of a decision- but all he picks out is Laurent’s red-rimmed eyes, and it’s less than what he’d hoped. The hall quiets, and tension draws tight in the air, like a band ready to snap. Eyes turn expectantly to the pair, as though a brawl between guards might break out in front of the throne.

“My friends, I would send you home early,” Damen announces. “Not to escape our communion, but to extend it.” He holds his hand out, palm up, and Laurent takes it gingerly, like this is new to him. “The prince of Vere has pledged himself to join me through Akielos, to Delpha, where we will be crowned jointly. I would prepare a feast in three days, to celebrate our departure.”

Relief breaks over the room, and sounds of approval and nods answer; Nikandros eyes Damen’s oddly relaxed posture, but it takes another few minutes for the room to clear, and for everyone in attendance to perform some bow or another to Laurent and Damen. By the time it’s just them and the guards, he’s almost convinced himself that they’ll draw swords and have it out here, in the foyer.

“What is it?” Nikandros asks, “I know he spoke of what I said to-”

“Who are you?” Damen says, and cocks his head.

Nikandros’s mouth falls open.

“ _Damen_ ,” Laurent chokes, and pushes him, lightly. Damen drops his confusion and chuckles, eyes dancing with humor, and Nikandros is tempted to hit him, himself-

-that is, before Damen grabs his shoulders, and says, “it’s back, Nikandros- all of it. It’s _back_.”

The floor shifts again.

Nikandros starts. “What? How-?” but Damen yanks him into an embrace, and something markedly different about it confirms. Nikandros returns it, laughs, _thumps_ his back, and grasps his forearms when they part. “Truly, it is? How the hell did you-?”

“Ye of little faith,” Laurent interrupts, with an uncharacteristically mischievous smile. “Oh, unless _you_ would rather have kissed him?” Damen snorts. Nikandros releases him, approaches with open arms; Laurent steps back and says, “wait- I was joking- I was-” he submits though, to a hug. A little laugh muffles against Nikandros’s shoulder, and the small, protective urge he usually keeps for Damen bubbles outward. His chest can’t contain it. 

Laurent pats his back awkwardly, like this is a ritual he hasn’t learned the steps to. Nikandros says, “I knew you would find a way. With or without them,” and Laurent’s shoulders curl. Is this the first time Nikandros has admitted praise aloud to him?

“I think I owe that to you,” he murmurs, and draws away. “A few people, actually.”

Jord comes over and squeezes Laurent’s arm. “We’re proud. For all it counts.”

“It counts,” Laurent says.

From the joy in it -small and persistent- and in Jord’s soft smile, Nikandros couldn’t agree more.

* * *

As soon as Laurent closes the door to Damen’s room, he’s enfolded again.

“You know, you’re going to have to let go, eventually.”

“I know,” Damen says, against the back of his head.

“Clingy.”

“You didn’t last three days before running back to me, and _I’m_ the clingy one?”

“I forgot- sharp, too-”

“Please, continue to compliment me,” Damen murmurs, and wraps his arms higher over Laurent’s ribs. He laughs, then Damen does, and for a minute they lean into each other, basked in the ease of familiarity that settles anew. Gods, Laurent missed this. He missed _him_.

“Are you tired?” Damen asks.

“Is this a test?”

“If it is, I hope you can see through it. Should I speak plainly?”

Laurent considers, “hmm, only if you can do it without speaking.”

“That’s too easy.”

“You’d rather without hands?”

Damen backs up, and pulls Laurent with him; his hands wander, and slide to his waist, leaving trails of warmth. He sinks onto his bed, Laurent braced over his thighs. Laurent tangles their fingers. Here, the heat dispelled in the upper floors, open to the ocean, and a small breeze has finally blown in. Damen kisses the knob of Laurent’s spine. Warmth blooms across his chest.

“Can I?” he whispers, toying with the strings between his shoulders.

Laurent swallows. “Yes. I’m not-? Your… side,” he finishes, lamely, but Damen shakes his head, his nose brushing Laurent’s nape.

“I’ll temper myself,” Damen says, and draws fabric loose, one lace at a time. “Though I can’t speak for you, I suppose.”

Laurent laughs. “Unfortunate, then, that I’m the more ravenous.”

“Mmm, you’re right, I’m in dire straits. I do need to be able to walk tomorrow. Maybe if I’m on my back.”

“How about like this?”

“I would cut off the blood flow to your legs. You’d go soft and probably pass out.”

“I can see how that wouldn’t be ideal.”

“On my side, how about? You can cradle me and pretend I’m fragile.”

Laurent laughs again. His face aches from grinning, but once they wind down, and he considers the image Damen invoked -really considers- heat slides down his stomach, and navel, and it’s so arresting that he stills. Damen notices. He peeks over Laurent’s shoulder, and Laurent’s face heats.

“Really?” Damen asks, but it’s soft, without a hint of teasing.

Laurent hesitates.

Damen waits, then shifts like he might ask something else-

“You said you haven’t, ever,” Laurent says, quietly. “We don’t have to. We- you just came back.”

Damen remains silent. Perhaps he’s wrestling his own desires. Finally, he admits, “I would like to- be able to touch you freely. If it’s alright.”

“You can still be on your back,” Laurent suggests.

Damen resumes undressing him. “A compromise for everything.”

“Not everything.”

The shirt comes off, then the undershirt. Laurent stands while Damen pulls off his winding sash and unties the knots at his shoulders; by the time they’re both bare, they’ve scooted higher up the mattress, and exchanged kisses again. Laurent reaches under Damen’s pillow, on a suspicion, and almost snorts when his fingers close around a vial.

“Nikandros was in this room,” he says. “ _Paschal_ was in this room-”

“And yet, no one thought to look,” Damen says. “Except you.”

“Of course, how promiscuous of me-”

“Did you _want_ Paschal to have looked?” Damen asks, gleeful. “Would that have been better, Laurent?”

“Oh my gods. Shut up, please.”

Damen does, at the first touch of Laurent’s oil-slick fingers. Laurent forecasts his reactions, step by step, to different ends; one brings them off at the same time, another finishes with Damen grasping sheets and swearing, and yet another has his hands on Laurent, around him, breaths carefully restrained. If he senses the moment Laurent pursues one, he doesn’t show it.

“Would you have fucked me if you didn’t remember?” Laurent asks.

“What happened to shutting up?” He sounds at ease, but his thighs twitch. “You know I thought about it.”

“How soon?”

“You know that too.”

He crosses his arms behind his head, and holds Laurent’s gaze. His breath quickens. 

“Close your eyes,” Laurent says.

He huffs, but complies. Laurent braces his hand beside Damen’s shoulder, bends over him, and presses his lips to his neck. Damen grins. Laurent places another on his collarbone. His jaw. The slick up-down drag of his palm fills the room, wet and irregular. Laurent mouths at the jut of Damen’s adam’s apple. His gut writhes with heat and need.

“I’d have come around,” Damen breathes, “I could forgive anyone, you know that.”

“It’s why I tried to leave.”

Damen shudders. His thighs push apart, then close. His fingers fist at his sides, like he’s following some unspoken command. “Was it hard? Could you manage without me?” There’s no ambiguity about what he’s asking. Laurent flushes.

“No.”

“Laurent-”

“You can touch me.” He presses against the center of Damen’s chest. “Be still. Your side-”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Damen grits, but Laurent’s hand roots him in place. He cups Laurent’s cheek, eyes open again, and it doesn’t take long for his breath to go heavy, and his other hand to grasp Laurent’s waist. He tips his head back and shudders. Saturated lust crawls down Laurent’s stomach. _Gods_.

It’s the first time they’ve fucked that Damen has no physical imposition over him. Even at Mellos, at the inn after Laurent brought him to release, he took action- here, his hands wander, but there’s no direction. Laurent’s arousal is impossible to ignore; the image of sinking into Damen arises again, and though directing and denying him is no substitute, there’s a route that comes close enough.

He releases Damen, hooks his knees over his elbows, and ruts against him, slowly. Damen makes a little gasp and digs his fingers into Laurent’s shoulder blades. Sweat beads the grooves of his abdomen, shallow from days spent in wine and hearty, Akielon meals.

“You enjoy this,” Damen says, and studies him, though his eyes are lidded and hazy. “You could have managed.”

His own voice sounds strained. “I like to have it over with- when I’m thinking-”

“Tell me.”

“The bed-” he braces his hand beside Damen’s neck, “-bed was too big. I needed your- ridiculous arms-”

“They’re barely on you,” Damen says, hoarsely, then, “tell me.”

“I couldn’t- I- can’t-”

Damen cups his cheek again.

“-tried not to want it,” Laurent chokes. “If I lost you- I wouldn’t. Not with anyone, not myself.”

They’ve stopped. Laurent looks away, painfully hard, and Damen’s chest rises and falls, fast, under him. A sharp wedge of discomfort crawls into his throat- this wasn’t how it was supposed to go. Vulnerable things are separate, in a realm outside thought.

Laurent reaches to take Damen in his hand, to resume some normalcy- Damen catches it before he can. “How did you know if you’d lose me or not?”

“What?” he sounds strangled, or half-drowned. “I didn’t. I had to consider- the same as knowing if you’d find affection for me, or not-”

“Laurent,” Damen says, softly. “Stop living in your prophecies.” He pushes a lock of hair out of his face, bleeding tenderness. “I’m not there.”

Laurent searches for words, and finds none.

His heart pounds against his ribs.

Damen traces up his side with the backs of his knuckles, then drag down, and in this light, he’s like sunburnt bronze in a river of sheets. Laurent leans down and kisses him, and he tastes like wine, like mutton, like olives covered in honey. Rain and perfumes soaked into them both. He’s rough, at the outside of his thighs, and hair dusts his chest, down, down; the fingers he slides around Laurent’s nape are tough, but smooth.

When he draws him close, Laurent hikes Damen’s knee around his waist, and threads their fingers together. Here. Here is the line. Here is the sea, come to swallow him.

Here is everything between.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. helots: slaves that formed the base of Sparta's economy  
> 2\. Eratosthenes and Theocritus: Greek historical figures whose names I yeeted from my civ textbook for stand-in names, then didn't feel like changing  
> 3\. Crops: watered  
> 4\. Damen: horny  
> 5\. did I do enough research to know where Kempt is? yes. did I do enough research to check if the inn was in Mellos? no  
> 6\. pls god don't comment about the sex, I included it bc it felt right artistically but I'm very uncomfortable with talking about it/reading comments about it  
> 7\. bittersweet ending because the theme RAN away from me
> 
> Aaaand that's it! Kinda torn on the epilogue; idk if this ending felt incomplete, I hope I wrapped everything up pretty well haha. Thanks everyone for commenting, yall made a rough few weeks of class wayyy more bearable :)

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr @hazelnatcoffee  
> Twitter @HazelMusings
> 
> Chapter 2 should be up in a week or so... come yell about captive prince while I suffer through western civ!


End file.
